Geography

Covering most of the northern part of the North
American continent and with an area larger than that of the United States,
Canada has an extremely varied topography. In the east, the mountainous
maritime provinces have an irregular coastline on the Gulf of St. Lawrence
and the Atlantic. The St. Lawrence plain, covering most of southern Quebec
and Ontario, and the interior continental plain, covering southern
Manitoba and Saskatchewan and most of Alberta, are the principal
cultivable areas. They are separated by a forested plateau rising from
Lakes Superior and Huron.

Westward toward the Pacific, most of British
Columbia, the Yukon, and part of western Alberta are covered by parallel
mountain ranges, including the Rockies. The Pacific border of the coast
range is ragged with fjords and channels. The highest point in Canada is
Mount Logan (19,850 ft; 6,050 m), which is in the Yukon. The two principal
river systems are the Mackenzie and the St. Lawrence. The St. Lawrence,
with its tributaries, is navigable for over 1,900 mi (3,058 km).

Government

Canada is a federation of ten provinces
(Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and
Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, and
Saskatchewan) and three territories (Northwest Territories, Yukon, and
Nunavut). Formally considered a constitutional monarchy, Canada is
governed by its own House of Commons. While the governor-general is
officially the representative of Queen Elizabeth II, in reality the
governor-general acts only on the advice of the Canadian prime
minister.

History

The first inhabitants of Canada were native
Indian peoples, primarily the Inuit (Eskimo). The Norse explorer Leif
Eriksson probably reached the shores of Canada (Labrador or Nova Scotia)
in 1000, but the history of the white man in the country actually began in
1497, when John Cabot, an Italian in the service of Henry VII of England,
reached Newfoundland or Nova Scotia. Canada was taken for France in 1534
by Jacques Cartier. The actual settlement of New France, as it was then
called, began in 1604 at Port Royal in what is now Nova Scotia; in 1608,
Quebec was founded. France's colonization efforts were not very
successful, but French explorers by the end of the 17th century had
penetrated beyond the Great Lakes to the western prairies and south along
the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, the English Hudson's Bay
Company had been established in 1670. Because of the valuable fisheries
and fur trade, a conflict developed between the French and English; in
1713, Newfoundland, Hudson Bay, and Nova Scotia (Acadia) were lost to
England. During the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), England extended
its conquest, and the British general James Wolfe won his famous victory
over Gen. Louis Montcalm outside Quebec on Sept. 13, 1759. The Treaty of
Paris in 1763 gave England control.